Put the body: to rescue and make visible the sexual and gender marks of the dictatorial archives of the Southern Cone

Abstract

The traumatic consequences that the dictatorial experiences of the Southern Cone left inscribed in the social body of the respective countries, has been a thematic field vastly studied in the last twenty years. In the case of Chile it has been fundamental the publication of books such as Alegorías de la derrota (2000), by Idelber Avelar, Pensar en / la postdictadura (2001), edited by Nelly Richard and Alberto Moreira, Memoria, mourning and narration. Chile after Pinochet (2004) edited by Roland Spiller, Scriptures, images and scenarios before the repression (2005), edited by Elizabeth Jelin and Ana Longoni, among many others. The book that we are describing here is inserted in this genealogy and it does so from an eminently multidisciplinary perspective. The texts focus mainly on the issue of gender violence in the context of state terrorism in Paraguay (1954-1989), Uruguay (1973-1985), Chile (1973-1990) and Argentina (1976-1983). The diverse authors reopen juridical and legal discussions of the transition, where gender and sexual violence have not really been cataloged in their particular specificity. Almost four decades have passed so that the denunciations of the first years of the democratic transitions have been heard in the legal and cultural setting of the post-dictatorships, acquiring the testimony of the surviving women a renewed nucleus of meaning and representativeness.